EXAMINING THE LAUSANNE CONVENTION ...........................................................................................................
Renée Hirschon
St Peter’s College, University of Oxford
This speech given by Renée Hirschon on the 7th and 8th November 2003 is about the Greek - Turkish compulsory population exchange as agreed in the Lausanne Convention in 1923. When giving the speech the speaker intended to examine the consequences of the above-mentioned Convention and to see what we can learn from this example of forced migration that could be proven useful in a similar situation in the future. Having lived for a year in a neighborhood of Piraeus in the 1970s, the speaker had the opportunity to socialise with forced migrants from Turkey and to gather some of their opinions on the particular subject. After listening to many stories by those of the elder generation who remembered actual facts and could share their experiences, she reached some conclusions.
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Very often, she would hear interesting stories describing sweet memories of the past. What she found very important was the fact that those people were able to understand and live with diversity, as it was a basic characteristic of the society they had lived in up to the 1920s. Until then, people had learned to live without expressing hostility towards others who behaved in a different way as their society had always been multicultural. Habits of every group of population were easily accepted by others, while stereotypes did not exist. The ‘unmixing’ of mixed populations though led to the destruction of multicultural societies, thus creating two different national identities. Numerous are the claims of people that describe their relations with Population Exchange
the Turks and other populations friendly. This is not only proven by people’s statements, but also found in many different sources such as historical archives. However, the memories would not always be sweet and agreeable. The elder generation had not forgotten cases of killings, manslaughter, rapes or even the great fires and everything that forced them to migration. Nevertheless, what seems to be very important and yet strange is that those people did not put the blame on Turks in general. On the contrary, they knew that what happened then was the governments’ fault. It is very impressive to see how balanced their good and bad memories are. Some claim that the co-existence of different groups of people might result in conflicts, but according to the speaker, it could only result in the forming of a more sophisticated society, which can recognize and accept diversity, as social contacts tend to reduce prejudice against groups of population, under given circumstances. As for the hostility between the two nations, which is currently apparent, it is obvious that it has been created by those who wrote each nation’s history and some groups of people who have extreme beliefs. It is certain that modern multicultural societies have still much to learn from those older ones.
SOCIAL AND CULTURAL INFLUENCES FORM THE SETTLEMENT OF THE ÉMIGRÉS, .........................................................................................
SIA ANAGNOSTOPOULOU
As it is already common knowledge, the vast population movements are a result of important subversions occurred in the history of a region, whilst the settlers become subversions themselves for the history of the hosting regions. The population movement from and towards Near East (TR), mainly between 1922-1924, confirms this general assumption. Since 1922 until the Treaty of Lausanne and the population exchange, 1923Association des Etats Généraux des Etudiants de L’Europe